Grammar Schools

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) for securing the debate. He has said many things that I agree with, particularly on the Kent grammar school system.

When I arrived in Kent as a parliamentary candidate, I had no great understanding of the grammar school system, although I did have an open mind. I wanted to find out what parents felt about the issue, and when knocking on doors I came across families in which one child went to a grammar school and the other to the high school. Sometimes the child at the high school went on to sixth form at the grammar school. I found that Kent had an integrated system and that it was impossible to knock on a door and say, “That is a grammar school house,” or, “That is a high school house.” Perhaps that has something to do with the number of grammar schools in Kent. In my constituency, as in that of my hon. Friend, there are four grammar schools. Therefore, 30% of young people in my constituency go to a grammar school, and it also allows children who have finished their high school education to attend sixth-form college at a grammar school. People can access that excellence at any time.

One thing that struck me very starkly was social mobility. We look for excellence in education, and no one disputes that grammar schools provide that. There is always, however, a big question about whether grammar schools attract only children from middle-class families. One school in my constituency, Chatham House, surveyed its pupils’ parents and found that only 20% had been through higher education. Therefore, 80% of children at that school will be the first generation to go into further education or university. For me, that provided a stark understanding of the issue, and it sounded a clarion call that we are talking about a route into higher education for a first generation of children.

In one of the richer areas of east Kent—an interesting thing to say, because the area has high deprivation— Sir Roger Manwood’s grammar school in Sandwich has an average number of children on free school meals. Again, that reasserts the message coming across from teachers.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am sure that the statistics that the hon. Lady has quoted are correct, but is she aware that overall, the ratio of state to grammar schools is 25:1? There are 158 pupils on free school meals in non-grammar schools for every one in a grammar school. The ratio is 158:1, rather than 25:1, which is what it should be. Is the grammar school mentioned by the hon. Lady highly unusual?

[Laura Sandys]

It is not unusual for me or for parents who send their children to grammar schools in my area, but different counties have different systems. Kent has a high number of grammar schools that are attended by between 25% and 30% of children. That offers a huge opportunity for young people from diverse backgrounds to access the grammar school system. Other counties have few grammar schools. That is a pity, because the schools attract only a small number of children, which may not include a representative percentage of the population as a whole. In many ways, that supports my advocacy of the need for more grammar schools to create a proper mixed environment and educational system that is appropriate for different children with different abilities at different ages.

As my hon. Friends and I have said, grammar schools do not work in isolation, and when seeking excellence in our grammar schools, it is crucial that we also seek it in our high schools and other schools in the area. We cannot promote grammar schools without promoting a mixed educational environment.

Kent is lucky to have very good high schools, and I ask the Department to look at how they are judged during Ofsted reports. It is important that the system in which those schools operate is understood by Ofsted and that the 30% of children in my area who enter the grammar school system is understood in the context of what those high schools have achieved in that mixed and selective system.

I wish to be clear on three points. First, we must not undermine excellence. I was concerned to hear about the campaign in Reading, because if we end up with a situation in which grammar schools, which are excellent schools, are threatened or put under pressure by parents, we will do our education system a big disservice. Secondly, I would like the Department to be clear about the opportunities and social mobility offered by grammar schools, when there are enough of them in an area to enable them to increase their intake. Thirdly, I will always be dedicated to my high schools, and I am clear that they need to achieve a huge amount. The Government must understand the selective nature of the system in which they operate.

We are looking to increase opportunities for schools to expand, extend their interests and attract parental choice, and that will be the same for grammar schools, high schools and technical colleges. At the same time, we must maintain and sustain the excellence that currently exists in our grammar school system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. Like everyone who has spoken before me, I am a strong supporter of grammar schools. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), whom I congratulate on securing the debate, I am a product of the grammar school in the constituency that I represent.

Rugby retains grammar schools, but we have the best of both worlds because we also have non-selective schools. We have a non-selective school in Ashlawn that has a grammar stream, and we have two high-class, selective, single-sex grammar schools—Lawrence Sheriff school for boys and Rugby high school for girls. I should declare an interest, in that my daughter is a pupil at the girls’ school.

As I say, Rugby has grammar schools, and I am a product of Lawrence Sheriff. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) was there a few years before me, and I came to this place with my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), who also went to the school. The school therefore has a proud tradition of producing Members of Parliament.

At the school, I was in a class with the sons of cement factory workers and scrap metal merchants, each of whom was the first member of their family to go to university. I therefore have a good understanding of the role of grammar schools in providing social mobility.

We retain grammar schools in Rugby because of the hard work and diligence of an earlier generation of politicians, who fought to retain our selective schools in the face of the comprehensivisation of Britain. The fact that we have grammar schools is a major asset for the community that I represent. Our schools are in high demand. Parents move into our area to provide their children with the opportunity to attend a grammar school, and they also apply from substantial distances—20 or 30 miles away—to secure that kind of education for their children. We know the schools are popular, and it is because of the high standards and excellence that a grammar school provides. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford gave a full account of the academic qualifications secured at most grammar schools.

I am pleased that the Government recognise the strengths and qualities that grammar schools can bring the country, and that they have brought forward a policy that will enable them to expand. In Rugby, we have been looking forward to the expansion of our grammar schools in the past few years, because of our party’s policy to permit them to grow where there is population growth. Rugby has a very positive approach to new housing development. We have a site that is expected to take 6,200 new homes in the next 20 years, and we are expecting the grammar school provision to increase in proportion. It is great news that we may be able to go further.

I am anxious to ensure that our grammar schools should be available for the broadest possible number of children in our community. I have one or two anxieties about the selection process that will take place in an era of academies. Until now, the selection arrangements for our existing grammar schools have been run by the local authority, and I have two concerns about the process to which the authority has moved in recent years.

The first concern is about the need for parents to opt in. That came home clearly to me much as it did to my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys). I was on a doorstep talking to parents who had a bright and gifted young child, who had been denied the opportunity of a grammar school place because they had not filled in the necessary form in time for the child to take the exam. I was horrified that there was a system in which parents must opt in rather than opting out. I should like the Minister to comment on an opt-out system. I recognise that there will be parents who decide that a selective education is not right for their children, or who do not want to put their children under the burden of taking a selection exam. However, if we are to make our grammar schools the engines of social mobility that they should be, we should make certain that a child’s ability to sit the selection exam is not determined by their parents’ ability to get a form filled in on time, and sent back to the school and local authority.

[Laura Sandys]

Another issue in my constituency is that fewer girls than boys apply to grammar school. There is no reason for that, other than parents’ not necessarily looking at their girls, and their potential to go to grammar school, in the same way. My hon. Friend’s system would be extremely interesting, in many ways, in relation to opening that up and perhaps increasing the number of girls who apply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

I am not in the least antagonistic towards any school. As I have made clear, our policy is that the parents of children in the feeder schools to such schools should have the decision as to whether a system is selective or not. Let us be clear. When discussing grammar schools, it is not just a case of one school, but a selective system in an area. That is the consequence of having selection. It is quite right that parents should have a choice on that.

The hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) made the point that academic excellence is extremely important, and she referenced the very good schools in her area. I simply reiterate that academic excellence can be catered for in good, non-selective schools, whether they are academies, community schools or whatever.

On the point of social mobility and the make-up of existing grammar schools across the country, in a parliamentary answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) in April this year, which can be found in the Library debate pack for this debate that I am sure hon. Members have seen, the Minister set out the number of year 7 pupils attending state-funded secondary schools overall, the number of those pupils attending grammar schools and then the numbers of pupils from a black ethnicity, those who receive free school meals and those who have a statement of special educational needs. It must be said that the Minister’s statistics show that grammar schools are purely academically selective; they are clearly socially selective as well.

[Laura Sandys]

As I outlined in my contribution, different areas have different settlements when it comes to grammar schools and high schools, and that is important to understand. In an area with many grammar schools, there is a much greater cross-section of the population. When there are only three or four in a county, they are often in rural areas and people must drive to them. There is therefore a difference in the systems. We often put an umbrella around all grammar-school systems as if they were one, rather than look at the nuances that have developed in different areas with different outcomes.

[Kevin Brennan]

In her speech, the hon. Lady made the point that the grammar school in her area with a free school-meal intake was at exactly the average for the area, but that is an exception. It has to be an exception, and the statistics show that. In 2010, for example, 96,680 year 7 pupils attending state-funded secondary schools received free school meals out of a total number of 549,725. Out of 22,070 grammar school pupils, 610 received free school meals. The table goes on to give a percentage, and I must say that, using my comprehensive school maths, I think that the figures are wrong in the Minister’s answer. I am sure that it was not his answer, but perhaps a mistake in translation when it went into the debate pack. The percentage calculations that I have done to check seem wrong, but what is clear from the figures when they are recalculated in a different way is that the ratio of state-school pupils to grammar-school pupils is about 25:1 and yet the ratio for free school meals is 158:1. There is clearly a huge amount of social selection going on, but I give those figures with the health warning that they may have been mistranslated along the way. Perhaps the Minister will clarify that—if not now, at a later date.

I will not go on much longer except to say that, as I stated earlier, Andreas Schleicher, the OECD statistician who compiles the figures for the programme for international student assessment, pointed out at a meeting that I attended that the best school systems in the world are non-selective. That is a clear conclusion of the OECD’s research.